1961 Jaguar E-Type ‘Barn Find’ sells for £110k

An unrestored 1961 3.8 litre flat-floor Jaguar E-type ‘Barn Find’  – left languishing for 30 years untouched – has sold at Bonhams for £109,020.

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There’s no doubt that most of the car world agrees the Jaguar E-Type is one of – if not the – most beautiful cars ever made, even if the huge volume that were produced means its beauty isn’t really reflected in its value.

Rarity is all in the classic car world, which is one of the reasons why the early, pre-Fiat Ferraris command huge prices (there were only 33 Series 1 Ferrari 250 GTOs built and you would now have to pay north of $40 million for one) and why the E-Type – glorious and desirable though it is – commands a fraction of that.

In fact, you can pick up a very decent E-Type in good condition for as little as £50k, and even E-Types that have been fully restored and with low mileage don’t often break the £100k barrier. So why has this tatty 1961 flat-floor E-Type sold for £119,020 at Bonhams auction at the RAF Museum in Hendon?

To start with, we’re back to rarity.

This E-Type is number 60 and one of the first E-Types to be built, which means it is untainted by later ‘improvements’ (some dreamt up by Jaguar, some enforced by ‘safety’ regulations) so it has the ‘flat-floor’ (which makes it a bit hard to drive if you’re tall) and a lovely line of toggle switches on the dash instead of the later rocker switches (safer in an accident, apparently).

All that adds to the value of this E-Type, but what really makes the difference is that it’s unrestored and unmolested by a succession of owners trying to either ‘improve’ their cars or bring them ‘up to date’.

The Classic Car world is slowly realising that restoration should maintain a patina of age; don’t re-trim the interior, don’t re-paint the body and don’t impose a host of ‘updates’ to the mechanicals. Keep a car as original as possible, and it’s now more desirable.

So although this particular E-Type is going to be ‘restored’, we’re guessing that restoration will be hugely sympathetic to its originality and when it does come back up for sale, which it will at some point, we’d expect it to be as original as any E-Type there is.

And then we’ll see an auction price the wrong (or right, depending on whether you’re buying or selling) side of £200k.

Jaguar E-Type Photo Gallery

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